Conversion Tracking - What you should Track?

When it comes to tracking conversion, people very often choose single point conversion. Most popular choice is the query confirmation page. It is good if objective is to measure the ROI of the campaign with respect to revenue only. However, it has inherent danger of excluding keywords, which although may not have sent visitors to query confirmation page, but might have helped them to take action after sometime. So, eliminating them indirectly eliminates some conversions too. If you want to improve the overall user experience on your website, then tracking should be multiple points. Anything useful, should be called conversion. So, not only the hardcore revenue generation page, but all the pages which measures visitor interest in your website, should be called conversion. It helps boost the queries infact, and gives you chance to improve upon multiple points. If you only measure revenue generation as conversion, then you fail to notice the other weak points of your campaign, and conversion improvement is nothing but improving upon the weak points. Slowly I have started to change my views on measuring conversion. earlier I used to believe in measuring the single point of sales as conversion and have used it thoroughly in many of my campaigns. However, sale is the result of too many factors and one should not bother too much about it, when the sole purpose is the improvement and continuous improvement. Optimization with respect to conversion called final stage of sale is counter productive in the long run. You simply miss the opportunity to improve the campaign with respect to several other interesting factors, like view of some key pages. whereas, views of some key pages would measure the interest people took in your product and website, simply optimizing it with respect to final monetary action would lead you in the wrong direction, many a times taking decisions based on factors which are driven by market dynamics rather than usability of the website. Yes, it would increase the number of conversions in your campaign and that won't be any approximation of final dollars going into your clients pocket, but isn't it not the purpose of campaign manager. We want figures to improve, and market dynamics is beyond our control. If a campaign compels the visitor to look into the details of an offer, taking some useful action, the campaign is successful. Campaign should be focused on generating interest in the product rather than buying, because there is a period of latency between the two and increasing interest surely increases the final sales. Any keyword which is generating view of key page, is worth having, and you would learn it only when you see the differences in revenue generation comparing the two approach.